Tuesday, August 06, 2013

The Guardian wants your refugee story!

The hangings of nine Jews in Baghdad's main square in 1969 spurred the remaining 3,000-strong community to flee

Did you flee an Arab or Muslim country as a refugee after WW2? If so, The Guardian wants your story. Yes, I kid you not - The Guardian. Why? Because it does not feel it gave a fair shout to some refugees in its timeline by Mona Chalabi published recently (expertly 'fisked' by CIFWatchhere). That timeline omitted 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries altogether. This is your chance to do your modest part to put the record straight. But hurry - the deadline is in less than two weeks. Register as a commenter and write up your story in no more than 250 words.Here are the instructions:

How do I contribute?

Go back to the original timeline and add your comments below. Although tweets, emails and calls are helpful to us as journalists, they don't always encourage the transparent, open dialogue that comments beneath a piece can.

When should I contribute?

The comments will reopen for another two weeks. After that, we'll choose the best contributions and add them to our interactive timeline. They will be highlighted in a separate colour to show they came from you.

How will you choose?

We can't include everything. There is a physical limit on the article page and a conceptual limit about how much can be added to what is not, and could never claim to be, a comprehensive account of every displacement in history.

The displacements that will be added to the timeline will be those that:

• affected a large number of people either at the time or subsequently
• offer a different insight to those already included about the way that a country's circumstances can disproportionately affect one section of its population - either through disadvantage or persecution

What should I contribute?

Succinct accounts of no more than 250 words will be considered (the longest entry in the interactive so far). Please include:

• the number displaced
• links to sources of your numbers as well as pictures/quotes that illustrate the story

9 comments:

It's a carefully chosen date, conjured up to exclude the vast majority of Jewish refugees from submitting their story. The intended result is to thereby diminish the impact that the telling of the dispossession and oppression the Jews endured might make. The undisguised purpose of the entire exercise is to trivialize and dismiss grievances of the Jews against the crimes of the Arab states and the Arab League.

I blame the Jews who click like mad on CIF and largely contribute in the comments. They are the bread and butter of that site. I wouldn't be surprised she did it on purpose to begin with to inflate attendance to her posts.

We are at fault too. Why shouldn't they do it? They expect and are delighted by the hysteria.

I am not going to register, and I would recommend to everyone who can to UN-register en masse - and let the Guardian know they're being boycotted.

Anyone noticed they made a joke of the captivity of Babylon?

What, she has never heard of the Cyrus Cylinder that she writes that what has become of the "israelites" is unknown? The names of the lay leadership and the geonim are not recorded in the Babylonian Talmud?

This is a blatant violation of all the UN and Unesco declaration of Human cultural rights to access to free expression. They are limiting free expression of a very specific group by imposing an arbitrary date. These are grounds for a lawsuit.

And how about the Spanish expulsion? Has she not read the edict of Isabella and Ferdinand either?

Yesterday I left a comment, but could not find it today. It's probable that i did not do that correctly (as usual!!!)The Guardian will twist anthing your write for their own benefit and we Jews will be ridiculed.Sultana

Sylvia and BenApologies, I think I may have been misled into thinking that the G only wants stories of post-1960 refugees by the fact that it only references to UN stats after 1960. Certainly there is nothing in the instructions limiting the project to post 1960 refugees.

The Guardian should not be trusted. They colour every report on Israel and its people with their anti-Israeli agenda, and systematically suppress or distort reporting of facts that might create support for the policies and attitudes of Israelis.

The idea that Jewish refugees should come to that newspaper as supplicants, pleading that their grievances be given a hearing, is demeaning to all Jews. No other group is subjected to such disdainful and condescending attitudes. They know very well the history of Jews in Arab countries, and vast resources are available to them (not least this website) at the click of a keyboard if they need to refresh their memory. Their pretense that this subject is "new" to them is patently dishonest and insulting.

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)